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Banished diseases making a comeback in Europe

By Debora MacKenzie

A perfect storm of warmer weather, tropical migrants and plummeting health budgets is stoking the resurgence of once-banished, mosquito-borne diseases in Europe.

Several countries have been hit by Europe’s financial crisis, and by diseases brought in by human and insect migrants from tropical countries. Now, the Portuguese island of Madeira is in the midst of Europe’s first sustained outbreak of dengue fever since the 1920s, with over 1600 cases so far.

Meanwhile, Greece warned last May that public health cuts might undermine its control of malaria. It has contained sporadic outbreaks since 1990, but local cases surged to 20 in 2011, with eight this year. Public health agencies report that healthcare and surveillance must be “kept intact” to keep malaria from becoming permanent.